Are You Using The Right Cloud Providers For Your Business?
Do you know where the users of your services are? Are some of your customers complaining about slower load times, while you are noticing no performance issues at all in your country? Depending on the providers used, you could have wide differences in performance among different regions of the world. For instance, an Amazon EC2 in Singapore has the fastest response time in Singapore (115 ms), while the same instance might have the slowest response time for US visitors (450 ms). The former is lighting fast, while the latter is an eternity.
As website owners and app builders, we need to understand where our customers are located in order to use the appropriate service providers. I recently came across this tool from Cedexis that helps you track the average response times and error rates of various cloud providers in different countries of the world. In this post, I will cover some of the most interesting findings. For most reports, you can also check their websites.
(Test Provided Between 04-23/04-27-2012)
- VoxCloud leads the pack in response times in the US (230 ms for VoxCloud, New York) and German markets (104 ms for VoxCloud Amsterdam), while Amazon EC2 leads the Japanese (83 ms for EC2 Tokyo) and South Korean (153 ms for EC2 Tokyo) markets.
- Japan has among the fastest cloud service providers. Amazon EC2 in Tokyo has an average response time of 83 ms in Japan, while the fastest in the US has a 230 ms response time.
- Some Windows Azure instances are the worst of the pack when it comes to error rates: France (1.15%), Australia (2.46%), US (2.55%), Germany (1.18%). Typically, these instances are in the Asia East region.
- The Amazon EC2 Singapore instance is the fastest for the Singapore audience, while it is the slowest for the US audience.
- Amazon EC2 and VoxCloud have among the lowest error rates in many major markets, including the US, Germany and Japan.
If you are building apps to reach multiple regions across the world, take a look around the site and try to shop for providers who have the fastest response times and lowest error rates in those markets. There is no one-size fits all, and in many cases you might have to pick multiple providers to optimize your delivery.
By Balaji Viswanathan
